Title: Old Street Tricks
Part: 2 of 2
Rating: PG
Characters: Ten, Voice, Ken

Summary: There have been murders. In an empty car park just off Old Street, London, a mysterious voice has begun to trap victims with guilty secrets, and the Doctor wants an end to it.

Tag to/re-working of the FilmFour short Old Street, in which David Tennant plays the night manager. I just wanted to pretend it was the Doctor.

NB: You do not need to have seen Old Street in order to figure out what's going on. It's all explained.

Disclaimer: Neither Doctor Who nor Old Street belong to me in any way, though I wish David Tennant did.

Old Street Tricks
Part 2

The Doctor stood back, staring at the yellow machine. "You've internalised him!"

"True," the male voice drawled lazily. "True."

"That man is brain dead!" the Doctor yelled, jerking an angry finger towards Ken. "You killed him!"

"Come, now," said the voice. "Killed is such a harsh word. He was a sinful man, man!" And it chuckled again.

"So, what, you punished him for it?"

"I purged him of his sin," was the imperious reply. "I gave the world a little bit o' justice."

"What do you know about justice?" the Doctor spat, pacing in front of the machine. He paused as the voice answered:

"What do you know about it?"

When the Doctor didn't reply, the lights cut out and darkness fell heavily around him.

"Is this how you intimidate your victims?" he asked. "Plunge them into black?"

"I like to think of it as a-bit-a mood lighting," replied the voice. "It's surprisingly effective, ya know." There was an emphatic pause that seemed to echo around the empty car park. "So," said the voice, a shade darker than before. "Tell me: where you been tonight?"

"I'm not playing this game," the Doctor answered flatly. "I'm here to stop you."

"Sure, sure," the voice cackled until the laughter came to an abrupt halt. "Stop me like you stopped the others. How'd you stop them, hm? Stopped 'em talkin'. Stopped 'em breathin'. Stopped 'em livin'."

"Don't you dare," the Doctor growled. "Don't you dare compare yourself to my people."

"Oh, but it ain't just your people, is it?" gloated the voice as the lights flickered back on. "It's all those little innocent folks in the galaxy. Think you're their hero. Think you're their saviour. You let 'em down, Doctor. You always let 'em down."

"How are you doing this?" the Doctor demanded. "What's the significance of Old Street?"

"Old Street," the voice echoed with a certain amount of relish. "What would you prefer? Memory Lane?"

"So it's symbolic," said the Doctor slowly with a glance towards Ken's van. Its former driver sat limply, lulled forward against the steering wheel.

"It is a long road," the voice mused. "Lot o' people go there to do bad things. They do bad things in hotels, in banks, in shops, even in their own houses. Then they come back here and I find out where they been, what they done. Make 'em sorry. Make 'em feel guilty. Then they remember old things they done, bad old things, and they feel even more guilty. Old Street - the name says to me, it says: Old Sins."

"So that's it?" asked the Doctor, pacing again with a frown etched onto his handsome features. "You find an excuse and you internalise them – just like that." He span around to face the CCTV camera on the wall behind him. "Except I think it's more complicated than that. There is a whole universe out there just full of mistakes. What's so important about symbolism, what's so important about guilt? Why do they have to be guilty?" His demand echoed around the empty car park. "Well?"

No reply.

"I'll tell you what I think," the Doctor continued: "I think you need them to feel guilty. As sick as this is, it's not just a game; because you're not strong enough, you're not clever enough to internalise them straight away. You have to find a way of making them weak, vulnerable, and what better way than taking them through all those mistakes they've made, all the bad things they've done? Better still, take them to the brink, the very edge of actually feeling remorse–"

"And they're all mine," the voice finished with sadistic glee.

"What happens if they go that much further?" asked the Doctor curiously, looking up into the lens of the camera with a scrutinising gaze. "What if they get so far as to regret it all?"

"Regret don't change what they done."

"No, it doesn't," the Doctor agreed, "but it changes who they are in the present, what they might do in the future. Self-reproach is punishment enough."

"Regret don't change what they done," the voice repeated, tone flat, words forced.

"What do you care?" the Doctor asked with a brash shrug and open gesture. "You're nothing to do with them. I hardly think you're concerned for their spiritual absolution, either. It's all an excuse, this." He waved his hand vaguely. "All these tricks, it's hardly worth the effort if you ask me."

There was a pause. Then: "Shut up."

The Doctor grinned. "Why? Does it scare you? Does it scare you that I don't have to use telepathy to know exactly what you're thinking?"

"I warned you," the voice seethed, and the Doctor was pleased to feel it was losing its grip on his mind. He was less pleased, however, to find that Ken – or at least, the body that had once housed his consciousness – was climbing slowly out of the car.

The Doctor's face darkened.

"I don't want to hurt it if there's a chance of Ken being restored," he told the voice, reaching for his sonic screwdriver, "but essentially it's an empty vessel, and I will defend myself."

"You sure, Doctor?" asked the voice, reasserting its psychic grip on the Doctor's brain. "You sure you won't feel… guilty?"

"Speaking of which," replied the Doctor thoughtfully, "don't you ever feel guilty? If this is all about wrongdoing, I mean." Ken's empty body began to advance towards him. "The last time I checked, murder came pretty high up on the list of doing wrong."

"I feel no guilt," replied the voice, and in front of him Ken's vacant face contorted into an eerie smile.

"Oh, but you must do," the Doctor insisted, backing away as Ken continued to move towards him. "What, no conscience?"

"None," the voice answered, and this time it spoke through Ken's former mouth. "I got none."

"Sure you have," the Doctor replied, still moving slowly backwards, away from the intercom and the advancing figure of a deathly pale Ken. "What is a conscience, anyway? Knowing the difference between right and wrong? Well, then, you've got a conscience, haven't you?"

Ken halted with an unnatural jolt.

"Listen, man. Would someone with a conscience turn into a serial killer?"

"Of course they would," the Doctor replied, still talking to the intercom whilst keeping an eye on the partially possessed body of Ken. "A man will do anything, as long as he's convinced he's in the right." He glanced up at the camera, raising his voice. "Your conscience is the very thing condemning these people."

"All I want," said the voice, hushed now, "is a little bit o' justice."

"That doesn't qualify you to play god," the Doctor stated, lowering his sonic screwdriver carefully.

"But you," the voice protested, "they call you that - the lonely god! Who are you to lecture me on false divinity?"

"Stop throwing this back on me," the Doctor replied calmly, taking a step forward to the stationary form of Ken. "Throughout all of this, you've blamed your victims - and I'll tell you now, I have no intention of becoming one of them."

The voice muted, the Doctor took the opportunity to continue: "You're in my head. You can read my mind - but a wise, insightful woman once taught me that doors, once open, can be stepped through both ways. And the moment I step through, I will win the struggle; read me and know it's true."

"You would… kill me?"

"I would do what was necessary to protect the innocent."

"A noble sentiment," the voice grimaced. "What about the second option? The one you're thinking of now?"

"We could take that option," the Doctor nodded, gaze shifting up to the camera; "if you genuinely want it."

The voice wavered. "Regret won't change what I done."

"You want justice," the Doctor replied, turning back towards the body of Ken. "Justice is something you can't force on other people - but true regret is the closest you'll get to imparting justice on yourself."

There was a long, agonising pause in which the Doctor felt the grip on his mind slowly shifting; the intercom crackled; something reignited behind Ken's vacant eyes.

Two voices spoke at once: one, a distortion; the other, Ken's deep croak.

"I don't know the way home."

"You'll find it," the Doctor assured them both, and the intercom's distorted hum died a slow, reluctant death.

The Doctor shook his head, shedding the final tendrils of the voice's psychic grasp as they slipped, one by one, from his mind. He closed his eyes and locked the doors to his consciousness; then, eyelids flying open once more, he took a decisive step forward. "Ken?"

"I'm sorry." Ken stood, face no longer vacant, eyes now filled with tears. He shifted his gaze to the Doctor and the tears spilled down onto his cheeks. "I need to tell my wife… that I'm sorry."

"You can," the Doctor nodded. They stood there, in the desolate waste of an empty car park, two men in the aftermath of an internal struggle. "Just go home, Ken. Just go home."

The End.